The PEC examines processing data from seven Rio Tinto operations across the globe in real time.

The centre follows on from Rio Tinto’s Operating Centre near Perth Airport that has revolutionised the way the company’s vast iron ore projects run.

With the OC, the aim was to streamline the entire logistics chain from pit to port. The PEC drills down into the process level.

It is also a step by Rio Tinto into the world of big data. The company will be pulling data from numerous sources in its processes such as the Programmable Logic Circuit information from various pumps, motors and drives.

The challenge with big data is to be able to manage that information flow and not drown in it.

To this end Rio Tinto turned to the likes of NASA to help it develop human-systems interfaces to allow its process experts to handle the data torrent descending upon them.

The Brisbane PEC will house an expert mineral processing team that will share technical ideas and solutions with their colleagues on mine sites in Mongolia, the US and Australia about how to maximise productivity and improve performance.

With the aid of a giant interactive screen, technical data is monitored and analysed in real time, allowing processing improvements to be introduced immediately, introduced and operational performance to be optimised.

A trial phase of the PEC has already led to various procedural enhancements. One led to adjustments to the flotation process, which increased the recovery of copper and gold at Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia.

The PEC is linked to five coal sites in Australia and copper processing at Oyu Tolgoi and Rio Tinto Kennecott in the US.

Rio Tinto head of innovation John McGagh said there could be future PECs looking at different parts of the mining process.

For example, there could be a drill and blast PEC.

The mineral processing PEC worked with Brisbane-based JKTech for mineralogy, metallurgy and process control models.

McGagh said that centre had been on the cutting edge of comminution, concentration and flotation technologies for years.

It is also part of the reason this PEC is based in Brisbane.

Schneider Electric has provided advice on regulatory control, instrumentation and interfaces.

Metso CISA gave advanced model-based control and advanced instrumentation advice.

The University of Queensland, through the Rio Tinto Centre for Advanced Mineral Sorting gave advanced model development and acoustics.

Rio Tinto’s Innovation Centre assisted with collaborative tools and software development and Rio Tinto Technology and Innovation